In conventional vehicles, rearmost seats are retracted or folded, or moved forward to change the size of a luggage compartment. When there is a large amount of luggage that is loaded in the vehicle, the rearmost seats are moved to a loading state where a larger amount of luggage can be loaded. On the contrary, when there are a large number of passengers, the rearmost seats are moved to a seating state in which the passengers can be seated.
Some vehicles have a rearmost seat driver device for automatically moving the rearmost seats. An operation switch for operating the rearmost seat driver device is disposed at a given position in the vehicle. When the operation switch is actuated, the rearmost seats are automatically moved from the loading state in which a large amount of luggage can be loaded to a seating state in which the passengers can be seated, or conversely from the seating state to the loading state. The operation switch is normally positioned so as to be operated when a luggage compartment door is opened.
A remote control device is proposed in, for example, JP 2000-104429A, as a part of a smart key system that is capable of unlocking or locking doors of a vehicle without operating an electronic key. In this device, bidirectional communication is conducted to determine whether the key is an authorized (regular) key or not. When it is determined that the key is the authorized key in a door locked state, the doors are automatically unlocked.
When a vehicle has a smart key system and a rearmost seat driver device, moving rearmost seats from the loading state to the seating state, or reversely from the seating state to the loading state can be relatively comfortably conducted. Thus, it is possible to conveniently load the luggage or seat the passengers.
However, even if the smart key system and the rearmost seat driver device are equipped in the vehicle, loading of luggage and seating of passengers are sometimes not sufficiently conveniently conducted. That is, in the conventional vehicle, the rearmost seat driver device is driven to move the rearmost seats after an operation switch that is disposed in the vehicle is operated by a user. In order to operate the operation switch, it is necessary to open the door. For this reason, it takes some time to make the rearmost seats in a desired state. Also, since it is necessary to operate the operation switch, all users must know where the operation switch is disposed. However, for example, a user, who is not an owner of the vehicle but rents it, usually does not know the position of the operation switch and hence may not be able to drive the rearmost seat driver device.